I have lost track of how many of these “All My Friends Are In Bands” things I have done so this is just a new update. This one is also slightly different because one of the bands I am not friends with at all so it sort of defeats the purpose. That being said I needed a third video and They Might Be Giants are one of my all time favorite bands, there album Join Us is amazing enough that I actually bought it twice and their video features Rip Fucking Torn.

Well I guess we are already starting with the TMBG video so let’s begin with that. As I mentioned their new album Join Us is great. I bought it as an Amazon download and then I bought it again on vinyl which came with a download code which was pretty stupid of me, but this band got me out of the worst time in my life so they can keep my money.  When I was a sophomore in college I broke up with the love of my life and I was destroyed. Like I have never been and never will be destroyed.  Right before she broke up she lent me Flood by TMBG which was one of my favorite albums as a little kid. I started listening to it all the time and then I got into some of TMBGs other stuff and I realized this band was so brilliant and not the joke band that I saw on Tiny Tunes.  Their songs were so sad yet so upbeat at the same time. They were all I listened to for three three months it took me to begin to get over this girl. I have seen them probably ten times (although never in NYC which is odd considering we both live in Brooklyn) and they always were fantastic. There is actually a close up clip of me in the crowd in their documentary.

The other important thing about TMBG is that if it weren’t for them I might never have met The Gaskets, the band I managed for 5 years. A friend called me down to see them because they reminded me of TMBG. The Gaskets weren’t that into TMBG at the time but as soon as I showed them the music we quickly bonded over it and they ended up covering Don’t Let’s Start. (8 years later I am still working on showing their music to the world… and you can help by donating to fund the tribute album dedicated to deceased Gaskets member Ross Harman.)

Anyway, this video is awesome and Rip Torn is a bad mother fucker. I know you want to watch him do battle in some sort of hipster fight club. Seriously, watch it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzhKvCk3OMI[/youtube]

Next up we got my dude Ease Da Man’s new video for Levitate. It features Lynx Supreme and is pretty much the only track on the Average Sized Penis mix tape that isn’t about Ease doing drugs. This song is pretty much Ease just spiting madness about how awesome he dresses and setting designer clothes on figure while yelling FUCK SWAG. I support all of this and I sort of think Ease is a brilliant human who should be dead but somehow keeps existing. Plus the hook is catchy as fuck. I already posted this on my Tumblr but watch it again:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p0ELMpceag[/youtube]

Lastly we have Ninjasonik who seem to show up more than any other band in these music video write ups.  They constantly put out videos and they are always pretty fucking awesome. This new video isn’t quite as epic as the masterpiece that was Moshpit but it’s still pretty wild and the opening line telling Pitchfork to suck a dick is real on point. This video is for a track called Prostitute off the No Swords Or Masks mix tape, it guest stars Courcy and it features a lot of graphic Jah Jah on television sex.  Have no idea what I am talking about? Watch the fucking video:

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Over a year ago one of my best friends Ross Harman took his own life. I managed his band The Gaskets for five years and when he died I decided I had to play manager one more time. I reached out to many of his musician friends and got them to cover songs of his for a tribute album. A year later we had created a tribute album featuring 15 bands and 18 songs.

We were going to just put the album out digitally but the album was so good that we knew we had to do something more permanent so we decided we would try to raise money to put it out on vinyl. We held a fundraiser for him in Richmond, VA and raised over $4000. We raised so much money that now we are trying to raise money to release his solo albums, Calcutta and Symphony, as well.

So we started a Kickstarter fund to raise $2000 of the $5000 or so we needed to really do these albums right.  I put it up late last night and just posted it to Facebook and Twitter and went to sleep. When I woke up we had raised $800 already. It has really been amazing. I sort of feel like we are going to hit our goal of $2000 by the end of the weekend or something crazy like that but I want to keep going and see if we can raise the full $5000.  We could really make something special.

Anyway, I know most of you don’t know who my friend Ross was but he was really an amazing musician. All his music, solo or with The Gaskets, is available for free at TheGaskets.com. Check it out and think about donating to this project.  Plus for those of you who are into my photography you have a chance to get prints of mine on the cheap. There is a bunch of other stuff you can get too. Kill Shop Kill donated some T-shirts and Revolve-CD donated some CDRs for those of you who don’t have a record player.  For just $5 you can get the digital download.  And every dollar counts.

So click here do donate to the Ross Harman tribute album Kickstarter! Thanks!

Twenty four hours ago I was at the Vice.com Launch Party at One Hanson Place in Brooklyn. Currently I am in South Florida and I have not slept since the party. I got on a plane just a few hours after Rick Ross headlined the Vice shindig and he was actually on my flight. I gave him a card. So if you are reading this Mr. Ross…. hello sir, your show was great.

Since I haven’t slept in days I am just going to leave you with photos  but quickly a few highlights. The party was totally wild the guest list was insane and shit was just off the hook all night. There was a basement party in a bank vault and upstairs people were dancing and moshing so hard that the barriers were getting pushed back and the bouncers were having a hell of a time holding the crowd at bay. Death From Above 1979 played before Rick Ross and killed it even harder than they did when I saw them at Lollapalooza but probably not as hard as when I saw them start a riot at SXSW.

So yeah in conclusion, wild party, amazing times, Rick Ross ruled, DFA fucked shit up and all is well in the world of Vice.com.

Click here to see all the pictures from the Vice.com Launch Party at One Hanson Place.

For those of you not aware yesterday was an historic event. Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax got together at Yankee Stadium and played a most legendary of concerts. As a metal head in my pre punk rock years I would have lost my mind had this show been played in 1992, but as an adult I was still pretty psyched about it. That being said I did not have a ticket and the Village Voice sent me up to the Bronx to take photos of people hanging out outside, not inside the venue. Besides, my own band had practice and everyone knows that Fucking Bullshit is by far more important than a twice in a lifetime meeting of the Big 4.

I had yet to take a trip to the new Yankee Stadium and despite a few walks around the place I couldn’t really find anyone legit tailgating Heavy Metal Parking Lot style. I am sure there was a parking lot somewhere full of wild partying but I didn’t come across it. Instead I just talked to people waiting in line to get into the event which started about an hour after I got there but people were lined up anyway. I hung around for a couple hours and met a lot of awesome metal heads who could not possibly be more excited about anything. I talked to one guy who said that he was more excited about this than his wedding day.

I actually had a really good time just hanging out and I almost bought one of the many tickets I was offered but I finally just got back on the train and headed back to Brooklyn for band practice. We worked on a Body Count cover which I think is pretty fucking metal.

Click here to see my shots from outside of the Big 4 concert at Yankee Stadium.

One year ago yesterday my friend Ross Harman took his own life. I have lost a lot of friends in my life but never one as close as Ross. He was like a brother to me after I managed his band, The Gaskets, for five years. It was insanely difficult for me and the way I decided to mourn him was to put that grief into a project and manage him one last time.  Over the last year I reached out to a bunch of his musician friends and we put together an 18 track tribute album with 15 different artists covering Ross’ music.

Originally the idea was to just release a CDR of the music for friends and then give it away digitally but after hearing how amazing the record was we decided to try to release it on vinyl as a double LP. It seemed pretty ambitious considering to do it right we would need to raise more than $4000 so we decided to do a fundraiser show on the anniversary of Ross’ death and then try to raise the rest of the money through a Kickstarter project. I figured if I put in a few hundred bucks and a few other of his close friends did the same we could get about half way to our goal before we launched the Kickstarter… But evidently I was a bit off on my estimation.

Edo’s Squid in Richmond, VA was amazing enough to not only donate the space but give us 100% of the cash bar they had set up. The bartenders donated all their tips to the project and a bunch of people cooked and brought free food for everyone. The show was completely free and the booze was cheap but we left donation buckets out everywhere. We also sold CDRs of the album and I hit up a few people for some larger donations.

We had a great turnout and a great turnout of musicians who took turns playing their covers to Ross. We had Ross’ best friend and Gaskets partner Teddy Blanks DJ to start off the evening and then Schnitzel, who opens the album, opened the show with a mini set dedicated to Ross. After that we played a music video James Wallace recorded during Burning Man since he couldn’t be at the show and we played the video Ross directed for the Gaskets song Left Hand. Next, Rabbits and Novios reformed to play their covers to Ross and Chris Smith and Shannon Cleary each did two of Ross’ songs acoustically. After that The Atkinsons did a four song set ending with their cover of  “Left Hand” with Teddy Blanks fronting the band for that one song. Finally the night ended with one of Ross’ favorite local band the Ex-Patriots doing a six song set including the Gaskets cover they did for the record and a cover of Ross’ song Posture which I sang on the album and performed with the Ex-Pats.

The whole thing was so much fun and ran very smoothly considering that everyone involved was coming from all over the place to put this thing together. I need to give extra special thanks to Ryan Jones who did most of the event organizing and Brad at Edo’s who went out of pocket for this whole thing. It really is a testament to Ross’ life that so many people would do so much to make this happen. I also wanna thank Todd Raviotta who filmed the event and provided the videos that I linked to in this update. (Click all the links in this post!)

Oh… and did I mention that we raised over $4000 in one day? Fucking unbelievable. We are still going to try to raise a little more on Kickstarter but his record is really going to happen!

But if you want to see pictures from Ross Harman’s Memorial Fundraiser at Edo’s Squid click here! I was too busy to take great photos but I took wide shots of everything so that you can see all the bands that played and get a sense of the crowd that was there. I mostly took pictures so friends and family who couldn’t be there could see what we did. Enjoy!

Ps. For updated info on all of this please join Remembering Ross Harman on Facebook!

My punk cover band Fucking Bullshit is playing at Lit Lounge on 2nd Ave tomorrow (Thursday Sept 1st) at 11pm right before the dance party NC-17.  I feel pretty comfortable promoting the show after our last one went so well but we have only practiced twice since then so who know what will happen. I can promise you this… if you give a shit about punk rock from the early 80’s you will have a blast.  You will also get to see me drink which is a rare delight and I will fall over a lot and try to hurt the audience. At the very least it will be something to see. If you wan’t to know more about the band, see the songs we cover and watch some live footage you should check out the new half assed Fucking Bullshit website.

Now I have been bugging people about this show via Facebook and shit and I don’t really think I need to be blasting this shit to everyone on my website considering most of you don’t live in NYC and are just here for tits or juggalos or something else but last night I made a video promoting the show that I want you to see.

Fucking Bullshit is a cover band, so if we are going to make a commercial for a show we might as well cover a commercial. In the early 80’s Black Flag used to run radio commercials in LA for their shows and they compiled 17 minutes of these into one track called Crass Commercialism on their album Everything Went Black. We went ahead and covered the first commercial on the track mostly because it was the only one on YouTube.  Check it out.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSERy8Iox30[/youtube]

So now that we decided on a commercial to rip off the next step was for our bassist Brian Grosz, a professional voice artist, to record a parody of the commercial.  He sent it to me yesterday afternoon and the only move from there was to obviously shave my head.  I decided the punk rock thing for me to do was to shave my head for the show and I thought it would make a good visual to go along with the audio Brian recorded. My roommate recorded me doing it in the mirror which sort of references the Black Flag album cover for Damaged which coincidentally is the background music to the commercial. And then I spent way too long trying to edit it together into this video flyer.

So watch this shit and then watch us perform another Black Flag song and then finally go to the show tomorrow night. 11PM at Lit. Oh, and it costs $6 which is probably too much for you elitist hipster vip fucks to pay… Fuck off and die, Oi!, etc.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imuRnJyW_Qs[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDiuI0yeItM[/youtube]

Just when you thought you were finally finished with my Insane Clown Posse blog posts this happens….

I had a few people hit me up today already asking what I think of the news of the new Jack White produced Insane Clown Posse track “Leck Mich Im Arsch” which samples a Mozart song of the same name.

I am not really sure why any on is surprised about this. Both Jack White and ICP are from Detroit and rep their city really fucking hard and they both enjoy doing collaborations with people you would never expect them to work with. ICP has worked with Alice Cooper, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Snoop, Kid Rock and a lot more while Jack White has done stuff with Loretta Lynn, Electric Six, Alicia Keys and as part of this same Blue 7″ Series Stephen Colbert.

The real thing here is that Jack White knows two things. 1) This record will generate an insane amount of media attention for him, his record label and his singles collection and 2) he has so much fucking street cred that not even ICP can fuck that shit up. Jack White is one of the last rockstars in this country and producing a single for ICP isn’t going to do much to fuck up his image. Personally I think it’s kinda hilarious and I bet most people feel the same way.

Also this record is about promoting his real Third Man Records artists to a bigger audience. In this case JEFF The Brotherhood who appear as the backing band. On the Stephen Colbert single he was backed by The Black Belles who have their own solo song on the B-Side.

And lastly this record is about promoting Third Man Records on a local level. The release is tied to The MI Fest in Michigan where Third Man Records has their own stage and a mobile record store.  The actual record store in Detroit will no doubt get a shit load of new juggalo visitors who might be interested in other things Third Man has to offer. As people like Tech N9ne, the Dayton Family and Coolio know… there is money to be made marketing yourself to juggalos.

Now the one problem I have with this collaboration is that the song is pretty fucking awful. I know most of you think that everything ICP does is fucking awful but as someone who as recently as yesterday was willingly listening to ICP in their car I can tell you that this is not ICP’s best work. The track is a one note gag which is pretty much just the idea that Mozart actually wrote a song called Lick My Ass, which admittedly is hilarious, but there isn’t really much there for a song. Jack White’s production on it is questionable as well, maybe it’s just the digital release but it sounds really muddy and the guitars seem high in the mix, almost peaking.  But then again Jack White knows a shit load more about music than I do so maybe I will just shut the fuck up and buy the record anyway…

Check out the teaser and the track below…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyzjVL5tFn0[/youtube]

In my two years at The Gathering of the Juggalos I have made some friends that exist outside of Juggalo Island and I put Wolfpac in that group.  I first saw Wolfpac in the early 2000’s when I was living in Richmond, VA.  I used to be a pretty big Bloodhound Gang fan and when Daddy Long Legs quit and I heard he started his own band I had to check them out. Pretty much all I remember about the show was that they set a lot of shit on fire and the club filled with the smell of lamp oil and smoke.  I actually have it all on video somewhere…

Fast forward to last year at the Gathering.  The Wolfpac have a booth every year and when I walked up to the booth I saw they had a TV set up and were playing scenes from porn films they made called Girls of Wolfpac. I noticed Jade Joli who I met in a limo in Vegas when she was a Burning Angel.  I also noticed a girl I once had sex with in the Lit Lounge bathroom and a few other girls who have been naked on this website.  As I started talking to the guys I realized we have a ton of mutual friends including my homie Doug Sakmann who you have seen on this site a million times if you have been paying attention. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see their set last year but I did shoot their W Fuck Off Radio events which were wild as hell.

Since last year we have kept in touch a bit online and they have become fans of my website (as all fucked up tattooed girl loving people should) and I even ran into them on a juggalo cruise ship, so when I got to the Gathering this year they were some of the first people I looked for. We hung out a bunch this year and I was totally crushing on one of the strippers they roll with. I shot some W Fuck Off stuff again and I finally got to see their set much to the dismay of my partner in crime Camile Dodero who did not want to be awake for their 5am set time.

Their set did not disapoint with a mixture of fire, strippers and Naughty By Nature covers I came away pretty impressed. They have a whole riot squad of dudes just there to cause rukus, a half dozen rappers and another half dozen strippers who get by Jade Joli as the set goes on. Wolfpac were the only band I shot the entire set of at the Gathering because they played on one of the side stages so I didn’t have to quit after three songs. They also put on one of the wildest shows I have ever seen and I am pretty excited to shoot them again one of these days.

Now I gotta wrap this up but a few quick notes… 1) I was going to get the last of the GOTJ pics up today but I fucked up. The last big update with 300 pictures of random juggalos will be up tomorrow. 2) These photos are very NSFW so you have been warned. Now, let’s get it on.

Click here for the epic Wolfpac set at the 2011 Gathering of the Juggalos.

For more Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.

One thing that may have slipped past you when you were mocking my decision to travel to the Gathering of the Juggalos was that the bill of non clown related acts was absolutely incredible. I hit Lollapalooza the weekend before the Gathering and there were maybe three bands I was mildly exited to see. At the Gathering there were one or two bands every night I was fucking psyched about.

No matter what your beef is with the Insane Clowns you cannot fuck with a bill that includes Ice Cube, Bobby Brown and George Clinton.  Oh, did I mention Lil Jon, Xzibit, Mystikal, Busta Rhymes, Juvenile and Tech N9ne? Wanna go old school? How about MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, E-40, DJ Quik and Paris.  For the rockers you got bands like CKY, Saliva, Kittie and Hed Pe.  Plus about 100 other bands that I have no fucking clue are but I am sure are at the very least entertaining to watch. People kept telling me about a band made up of Kung Fu Vampires. You probably should not fuck with that.

A few notes about the bands before I give you guys the pictures:

• MC Hammer fucking killed it. Seriously. That guy is probably better now than he ever was and went over so surprisingly well. He had the juggalos eating out of his hand by the second song and he spent most of his set in the crowd with them.
• Paul Wall never showed and may or may not get murdered via hatchet in the next few weeks. Juvenile walked off the stage after two water bottles came near him. It was really embarrassing. And Busta Rhymes went on two hours late, perhaps due to pineapples, but then redeemed himself by rocking the crowd and seemed genuinely moved by the love the juggalos showed him.
• The moment I realized I am turning juggalo was when I heard Mystikal walk off stage and tell his boys “That was so fucking fun.” The juggalos threw so much shit at him and I was afraid he was going to pull a Juvenile and walk off but after 6 years in prison I am sure the Gathering was a peice of cake. The dude killed it and walked off part of the “Family” and I felt a lot of pride cause I guess I am part of that family too.
• Ice Cube opened with two N.W.A. songs and I almost lost it. I could barely take photos while I was screaming the words. It was amazing and that dude is so pro juggalo and said he would keep coming back as long as they would have him.  If it keeps him from doing a sequel to “Are We There Yet” I support it.
• Wolfpac was the only band I photographed from start to finish. They were on a side stage and had strippers with them. I’ll post those pictures in their own post in a few days.
• And George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic? Holy shit. Fucking amazing.

Okay, that’s all I got. It’s time to look at fucking pictures.

Click here to see all my pictures of the non Psychopathic Records musical acts that performed at the 2011 Gathering of the Juggalos.

For more Gathering Of The Juggalos coverage please check out the Driven By Boredom GOTJ archives.